Truce in Gaza –
Thousands of Palestinians jubilant across the territory
Several spontaneous rallies welcomed the announcement of a truce agreement between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday evening.
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Thousands of Palestinians exulted Wednesday evening across the Gaza Strip at the news of the announcement of a truce agreement between Israel and Hamas after more than fifteen months of war, according to AFP journalists and witnesses. .
The conclusion of this agreement, negotiated through mediation by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, was announced by a source close to the negotiations before being confirmed by an American official and the American president-elect Donald Trump announces “an agreement on hostages in the Middle East”.
In Deir el-Balah, in the center of the small territory, hundreds of people quickly showed their joy in front of the hospital of the Martyrs of Al-Aqsa, where so many dead have flocked since the start of the war, by dancing, waving Palestinian flags or taking photos.
Song of Resistance
Several spontaneous rallies took place in other localities, according to AFP journalists on site or witnesses contacted by telephone before the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that points remained to be resolved, while saying hope to complete the negotiations during the night.
In Deir el-Balah, a man and a journalist wearing a bulletproof vest are lifted onto the shoulders of the crowd for an interview above cheering Palestinians. As an ambulance arrives, “Allahu Akbar!” (“God is the greatest!”) burst out among smiling men and women.
Young children, some seeming lost in the middle of this agitation, are also there, at the show, wandering among the adults. A group of young boys, around ten years old, sing a popular resistance song, immediately filmed by a squad of cell phones.
“Come back to life”
Reached by telephone in the Nousseirat camp, in the center of the Gaza Strip, Randa Samih, a displaced person from Gaza City, struggles to contain her emotion. “I can’t believe that this nightmare that has lasted for more than a year is starting to come to an end,” said the 45-year-old Palestinian woman. “We lost so many people, we lost everything.”
Abdelkarim, a 27-year-old resident of Gaza, said he felt “joy despite everything we have lost.” “We will come back to life. I can’t believe that I’m finally going to see my wife and two children again who left for the south more than a year ago,” he adds, saying he hopes “that the displaced will quickly be allowed to to return”.
-In Khan Younes, in the south of the Gaza Strip, hundreds of people also gathered, singing to the sound of drums, according to an AFP photographer who noted the presence of armed men.
In front of the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, which is only partially functioning due to the significant shortages overwhelming the territory, dozens of people gathered, many of them smiling broadly. Confident of experiencing “mixed feelings”, Fadel Naïm, a doctor still dressed in his hospital uniform, said he hoped that “joy will spread to all houses”.
«Victoire»
Next, Khamis al-Assi lists the loved ones he has lost since the start of the war during which more than 46,707 people were killed, the majority civilians, according to data from the Hamas Ministry of Health. deemed reliable by the UN.
“I will set up the tent in front of my house and I will wait for the reconstruction,” concludes this man displaced by the fighting like almost all the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip.
The celebrations were more modest in the central square of Ramallah, the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank, where motorists honked their horns as they passed a small group of people handing out pastries.
“Those who claim that there is no victory are wrong: there is an indisputable victory,” Omar Assaf, a resident of the town, told AFP, “because the enemy has failed in all its attempts. objectives, while the resistance retains all its strength.
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